Family Ties
by Arctic Banana
Summary: Random fluffy, humorous, and/or heartwarming drabbles, some incredibly brief, others with more plot, that show what it might be like to be in Soundwave's makeshift family unit. Too bad he threw out the manual when he decided to take in a bunch of unruly Cassettes...
1. Enter Ratbat

_Just to note, I tend to write Ravage, Laserbeak, and Buzzsaw like they're older, Rumble and Frenzy like rowdy teenagers, and Ratbat like a baby or small child. :P_

_I find that whenever I'm sad or upset it always makes me feel better to write a drabble about the cassettes (__I also remember doing this occasionally with Wheeljack and the Dinobots, but I can't find any of them. I must have either deleted them or somehow failed to transfer them to my new laptop). _I have no idea why this is, but I do remember realizing that I did this when I discovered I have an entire folder full of them. Some of them need a bit of tweeking or rewrites before I'll deem them suitable for human eyes because they're so old, but for the rest I thought I'd post them so you can all be hopefully entertained by my stupid sense of humor.

* * *

Ravage yawned, stretching his body out while he did so. It was getting late and his energy bars were starting to run low. He'd had such a big day today. First he sat in a sunny spot in the hallway by a window and slept for a few hours, even sleeping through Starscream tripping over him. Then he'd watched Rumble and Frenzy chasing each other around out back. Afterwards he spent several hours staring at a ghost in the corner of the room that no one else seemed to be able to see. Finally, he'd finished up the night with some food left out for him by Soundwave and decided to thank him for the treats he'd hidden at the bottom of his bowl by sharing with him the kill he'd made in the basement store room earlier that day, which he'd left right in front of his bedroom door where he was sure the boss would see it. He couldn't wait to see how pleased Soundwave would be with him when he saw what a marvelous hunter that Ravage was!

Ravage jumped up, slapping a panel with his paw that opened the door to Soundwave's room for him, and headed straight for the berth, where he'd lie until Soundwave came in for the night so they could recharge. Jumping up onto his usual perch, he was surprised when he landed on something hard and lumpy wrapped in a towel and propped up by several pillows. He jumped off to the side and stood warily a couple inches away, snarling at the strange lump. It suddenly wiggled, becoming still once more. Ravage watched it curiously. He inched forward ever so slowly, reaching out a paw and touching it, giving it a gentle shove and retracting his limb when he saw the towel recede. Ravage found himself face-to-face with a pair of glowing red optics.

He was about to ask this obvious intruder who it was when it lept forward and pounced on his face. Ravage felt sharp claws sink into his neck and throat as whatever it was attempted to hold on firmly. _Oh god, it's an alien! It must be trying to lay eggs in my stomach! _Ravage panicked as he shook his head violently in an attempt to throw the personal space invader off his face. He roared angrily at it and ran in circles, falling off the side of the berth and sprinting around the room with the strange creature holding onto him for dear life. He smashed into shelves and the desk, knocking things every which way as he went. He went sliding on a data pad and crashed inside the closet, the tiny monster finally letting go and falling to the floor amidst the clutter as a shelf full of junk collapsed on them both.

Ravage climbed out from under the shelf, lept out of the closet, and ran to the other side of the room. He flattened himself against the wall and hissed at the intruder menacingly, prepared to attack it should it attempt to come at him again.

* * *

Soundwave returned to his room with fresh energon for his new little guest. He felt something squish underfoot as he approached his door and looked down. The cold, lifeless eyes of an eviscerated rodent stared back at him from the floor. Soundwave realized he was standing in entrails and quickly moved his foot. Ravage's calling card, definitely. "Rumble, eject," Soundwave commanded.

Rumble ejected from Soundwave's chest compartment and looked around excitedly. "Alright Boss, what do you need me to do this time? Blow up an oil rig? Burn down an orphanage? Commit voter fraud?" he asked, eager to receive his orders.

"Commence operation: Clean That Up," Soundwave ordered, pointing to the dead animal on the floor.

Rumble looked at the floor and sighed. "Oh. Right away, Boss." Soundwave heard him mumbling under his breath, "Why doesn't he ever ask Frenzy to do it?" while he entered his room.

Soundwave stood in complete shock at the chaos before him. His and his cassettes' belongings lay scattered all over the floor. Ravage stood against the wall growling at the closet. An overturned box scurried out from the wreckage of a spilled shelf inside and ran for the door, stopping when it realized there was someone there and making a U-turn towards the space under Soundwave's berth. Ravage backed up further away from it as it came closer.

"Um, Boss? Why is that box trying to run away from home?" Rumble asked while he held the dead rodent as far away from his body as possible.

"Down, Ravage," Soundwave commanded. Ravage relaxed at the sound of his voice and laid down against the wall, refusing to take his eyes off the box beneath the berth. Soundwave kneeled next to it and reached underneath towards the box.

Rumble deposited the rodent in a nearby waste disposal unit and joined Ravage against the wall. "What are we looking at?" he whispered.

That was when he noticed the blood-red eyes staring back at them as Soundwave dragged the contents of the box out from its hiding place and held it to his chest to comfort it. A tiny, shaking body looked over his shoulder at the big, angry cat still glaring at him. Rumble got a feeling he knew what he was looking at, and if he was correct, Ravage wasn't going to like it.

"Soundwave...is this?" he paused.

Soundwave looked over at him and held up the tiny little bat-like creature for them to see. "Your new brother, Ratbat," he explained bluntly.

Rumble was right then. He looked at Ravage who looked less than pleased at having yet another brother to add to his competition for Soundwave's affection. He and Frenzy hadn't been part of the family in time to see it, but supposedly when Soundwave had added Laserbeak and Buzzsaw to the group, the first thing Ravage had done was try to eat them. Given how close they were now, he wouldn't have believed Laserbeak's account of the story if it weren't for the fact that Ravage had buried Frenzy in the backyard and chased Rumble halfway down a city block when he first met them. Surely Soundwave had remembered these incidents...why hadn't he foreseen that Ravage might find Ratbat and attempt to off him when no one was here to protect the little guy?

"So...Ratbat? Where did you find this one?" Rumble asked in an attempt to ignore the uncomfortable atmosphere that was building up just now. Ravage stood up and slowly made his way forward to sniff the new bundle of "joy" that Soundwave was wrapping back up in the towel. Ravage wouldn't dare try to hurt Ratbat in front of the boss, but that didn't help relieve the tension.

"Wandering around in the road," Soundwave explained. "Almost got run over." Ratbat made a tiny squeak as he yawned and curled up. "It's bedtime," he added, almost like an afterthought.

Rumble nodded. Frenzy was probably still up waiting for him. His brother absolutely refused to sleep at all if Rumble wasn't right there next to him when he did so. He returned to Soundwave's chest compartment and immediately felt Frenzy snuggle up next to him.

"Ravage. You too," Soundwave said to the cat. Ravage lept up on the berth and awaited night-night time, staring with discontent at the stranger who currently had his coveted space next to Soundwave.

Yeah, this was going to be an adventure. The transition period between adding a new cassette and Ravage finally accepting that cassette was always fun...


	2. And Then Disaster Struck

Frenzy sighed contentedly as he watched his brothers recharging peacefully together. Ravage was curled around Laserbeak, his tail wrapped lightly around the condor. It flicked against Laserbeak's neck as he twitched from a dream about chasing Autobots. He'd just caught Rewind and was just about to proudly present him to Soundwave in return for praises and cuddles.

Laserbeak made a cute squeaking sound as he snored. One leg kicked out involuntarily before he grew still once more. Ravage shifted lightly in his sleep in order to pull his leg out from under his brother and wrap his paw around him so he could snuggle him and began purring. Laserbeak readjusted to the change quickly and grew still once more.

It was a serene sight, one that few ever got to witness. They both looked so adorable, so twee, so very comfortable sharing that one cushy spot on Soundwave's berth. Frenzy must have been admiring them for twenty kliks before finally climbing up next to them.

He took a deep breath and held the trumpet up to his mouth...


	3. The Dangers Of Falling Asleep

Soundwave was fast asleep at his post. He'd stayed there long past his shift was supposed to have ended and no one had the spark to wake him after how exhausted he'd been lately. It was tough work raising six cassettes on top of your usual work, especially with Ratbat being so young and hard to keep track of.

"Hey Soundwave, what are..." Rumble paused when he saw him fast asleep. When the boss was asleep, one should not wake him at the risk of making him cranky.

A smile crept across Rumble's faceplate and he left the main control room, returning a few moments later with his brothers (sans Ravage, who was out prowling) in tow. They moved fast like a tidal wave sweeping through the room and were gone again just as swiftly.

Ravage returned later from his hunt with a kangaroo rat clamped firmly in his jaws with the intention of presenting it to Soundwave as a gift. He traced him back to the control room and arrived just as his boss woke up. Soundwave stared at his reflection in the monitor before him for a moment and turned to Ravage, who dropped the rat to the floor in surprise. Evidently his brothers found where they'd hidden the Crayola markers and used them to draw on Soundwave's face, giving him a smiley face, mustache, and a stylish monocle to go with the random squiggles and flowers on his mouthplate and visor.

"Congratulations," Soundwave deadpanned to Ravage. "You are about to become an only child."


	4. Feral

_I wrote this instead of sleeping. O_O_

_This story logically takes place before all the others since it details when Soundwave first added Ravage to his self-made family. Unlike the others I'd written it wasn't meant to be funny. I thought since I wrote about when Soundwave added Ratbat to the family, I'd write about when he found Ravage. I'll probably write drabbles about how he got the others too._

* * *

On this particular day at this particular moment, Soundwave was sitting alone, cleaning up some nasty bites on his arm. He'd accidentally scared Ravage as he hadn't seen him hiding under the berth until he reached under to grab something he'd dropped, accidentally grabbing Ravage by the leg in the process. Believing himself to be cornered and under attack, Ravage bit him hard enough to crack the armor plating. When he saw the long, drawn-out look on Soundwave's face he thought it was over, Soundwave would give up and throw him out right then and there, but instead he apologized for startling him and left the room.

Ravage stared at him quietly from the hall, trying to determine his motives for helping him. Why hadn't he turned him away? Why did he bring him back here and take care of him when his own creator couldn't even take the time to give him a proper name before throwing him out onto the street?

Ravage had been abandoned mere moments after his creation. He remembered being scared and confused when it happened, his mind too young and new to really comprehend what was happening to him as he was tossed out into a street and left to fend for himself. He didn't know how long he had been alone, just that he had barely survived the ordeal.

He was nearly depleted when Soundwave found him while out for a walk in Iacon. There was barely enough energy left in him to move and Soundwave had at first assumed him dead and wanted to take his body home to examine it as a curiosity (he was weird like that), only for him to be startled by the painful, guttural yowl that Ravage managed when he touched him.

Ravage had expected him to do what everyone else seemed to do when they saw him at the curb begging for food and just leave him there to die. At the most, he expected him to put him out of his misery and take his body home with him anyway. Instead, Soundwave was sure to be more careful and gentle so as to be sure not to cause him any undue pain and he took him home with him alive.

The recovery had been long and grueling. It wasn't just low energy that Ravage had been suffering. His left hind leg had been mutilated by vermin that he'd lost a fight to over a scrap of food, he required expensive replacements of some of his organs that appeared to have been malfunctioning from the moment of his creation (a possible hint as to why he had been unwanted), and worst of all, his trauma from abandonment and life on the street had turned him vicious and feral.

Soundwave struggled just to feed him sometimes as Ravage's instinct when presented with food was to attack everything near it that might be competition for it. Soundwave did not register as a friend yet so the fact that he was trying to save him didn't spare him from getting his arms clawed up to the point where he'd once slashed open a vital energon line and nearly caused him to bleed to death. When he wasn't attacking him he was hiding from him, a combination of fear and loathing driving him to avoid him like a plague of scraplets. It was this kind of behavior that had led to Soundwave giving him his current designation, something that no one to this day ever contested.

He didn't know why Soundwave had put up with him, especially as he overheard the many people who suggested to Soundwave that it might be more humane to just put him down. Maybe it was the fact that while most people looked at mini-cons and only saw something disposable, Soundwave somehow knew he was a lot more than that. He knew that Ravage was just as sentient as any other Cybertronian and that he was nothing more than a scared child who just wanted someone to take care of him.

Soundwave looked up when he heard the soft padding sound of Ravage's feet on the floor. Ravage had his head hung low and his optics trained on the mech before him, not an act of aggression for once, but one of submission. When Soundwave failed to react negatively to his presence he slowly and timidly grew closer, climbing up beside him and laying down on the couch with his head pressed to his leg. With the arm that Ravage had earlier bitten and he had since patched up, Soundwave reached towards him and gently stroked his head. It was the first time that he would ever be able to touch Ravage without some form of negative repercussion and, as it soon turned out, it would not be the last, either.


	5. Surprise Babysitting

_I found this in an obscure folder. The heck was I thinking when I wrote it? XD_

* * *

Shockwave was deep into research when he got the transmission. "Oh hey Shockwave, just a heads up, you're babysitting tonight," Starscream said calmly without even waiting for him to be in full view of the screen.

Shockwave very nearly dropped the vial of chemicals he was testing. He carefully set it back in the tray before addressing the Decepticon second-in-command. "I'm sorry, it sounded like you were just informing me that I was babysitting tonight..."

"That's exactly what I was saying, Shockwave," Starscream said. "In fact they should be there any minute..."

"You didn't think it was important to tell me this sooner?!" Shockwave asked angrily.

"Nope," Starscream stated bluntly. "Though Megatron offered some advice. He says don't turn your back to them or show any fear and you might be able to keep your other hand."

"Them? Who am I babysitting?"

"Oh, that looks like them right now."

The spacebridge came alive and the empty space within was replaced by Megatron and Soundwave with all his little cassettes. Ratbat was clipped to a leash and was flying around Soundwave's legs until he ran out of leash and was yanked out of the air while Rumble and Frenzy were in the middle of a heated slap fight. Megatron had a struggling Ravage tucked under one arm and Laserbeak and Buzzsaw under the other and Soundwave's normally calm demeanor looked like it was about to crack. He was twitching as he attempted to keep himself from snapping and looked thoroughly exhausted.

"Yep, that's them. Have fun!" Starscream waved before cutting off the feed, no doubt to hide the fact that he was laughing.

"Shockwave, thank you for volunteering to watch them all on such short notice. Soundwave really needs a break and no one else would do it," Megatron said just as calmly as Starscream had been.

With that he set the cassettes he was holding free. Ravage immediately pounced on Frenzy and started attacking him. Rumble, forgetting that just moments ago he was arguing with his brother, leaped on the cat's back and tried to put him in a chokehold to rescue him. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw tried to break the fight up and only seemed to rile it up even more. Ratbat just started flying the opposite direction around Soundwave's legs until he ran out of leash and was yanked out of the air again.

The only thing Shockwave could think to do was stare at them as the fight spread to the rest of the lab and things started flying everywhere. "Um..."

Megatron unclipped Ratbat from the leash and shoved him into Shockwave's hands. "We'll pick them up tomorrow morning. Say goodbye, Soundwave!" Soundwave faceplanted on the floor and began crying. "I guess that means goodbye. Well, time to head back!"

"Um...yes..." Shockwave already had the coordinates for the Nemesis on the spacebridge from the last time they'd used it, so all he had to do was hit a button to send them back. He looked back at the cassettes in time to see a desk go flying. One of them must have discovered his experimental pulse cannon. No wonder Soundwave was crying. "Alright, bedtime!" Shockwave shouted, halting the destruction only momentarily before Frenzy pushed Rumble and they all started fighting again.

"Rumble! Do not push Frenzy!" Shockwave scolded.

The twins looked at him with confusion. "_I'm_ Frenzy!" Frenzy shouted.

"And I'm Rumble!" Rumble pointed out.

"Whatever! You know what, from now on whenever you're over here, you'll be known as "the red one" and you're "the blue one"!" He quickly broke them up before another fight could break out and gathered them up. "And I say it's bedtime!"

Shockwave flopped them all onto the same guestroom berth. It had gone unused for quite some time now as the only guests Shockwave ever had were those femmes that regularly came to harass him whenever things got too quiet and they never stayed long. He tucked them in by dropping a sheet on top of them, shut off the lights, and charged out of the room.

"Well he seemed happy," Buzzsaw said. They all poked their heads out from under the sheet one by one.

"He didn't even read us a bedtime story..." Rumble complained. "Soundwave would have read us a bedtime story!"

Once the cassettes were tucked in for the night in the guestroom, Shockwave was finally allowed some peace. By the time he had finally cleaned up the large mess in his lab it was pretty much time for his own recharge cycle to start. Shockwave made his way to his quarters and flopped down on his berth, turned on the reading lamp, and decided to catch up on that book that he was neglecting. He was three pages in when his sensitive hearing picked up the soft _whoosh _of wing beats in the hallway.

"Go to bed!" he shouted at whichever one it was. There was a clicking sound at the door where someone was knocking. "Didn't you hear me?" Shockwave reluctantly got up and opened the door. Ratbat and Laserbeak were standing just outside, their bright red optics staring back at him through the dark hallway. "I said go to bed!"

"Rat can't sleep," Laserbeak replied. "It's his first night away from Soundwave."

"And just what am I supposed to do about that?" Before Shockwave could stop them, they flew into the room and landed on his berth. Ratbat climbed up onto his favorite pillow and curled up on it with his wings wrapped over his face. "Hey! I never said you could come in here! Back to your room!"

"He's not going to sleep in there," Laserbeak said. "You might as well. Soundwave won't be very happy if he picks us up in the morning and Ratbat's exhausted..."

Shockwave's sole optic seemed to twitch. "Fine..." he grumbled. He shut the door, returned to his berth, and pushed them both over to make room for him and then tried to go back to his book. A moment later Ratbat began to fidget restlessly. "Now what's wrong?"

"He can't sleep with the light on." Mumbling something the entire time, Shockwave dropped his book on the floor and shut off the light. Well so much for that plan.

He rolled over onto his side and decided to try to just recharge the rest of the night away. The sooner he did so the sooner he'd wake up and Soundwave would come to get them. No sooner had he begun to doze when he heard a sound at the door. "What was that?" he asked no one in particular.

_Maow, _the noise went again. Shockwave suddenly realized who that was and groaned.

"Did someone just meow?" Laserbeak asked sleepily.

Shockwave got up once more and opened the door. A small, black figure darted through his legs and gracefully lept up onto the berth, leaving a bright, yellow form standing in his place. "We noticed Laserbeak and Ratbat left and decided to join them," Buzzsaw explained before waddling in.

"Yeah...why not..." Shockwave replied. He shut the door and once again tried to go to bed.

"Maow," Ravage said. He started to nudge the edge of the sheet that Shockwave was laying on with his nose. "Maow."

"What?" Shockwave asked him.

"Maow." Ravage pawed at the edge and started tugging at it with his teeth.

"What do you want? I know you can talk Ravage, I heard you do it before, just tell me!"

Because Ravage rarely decided to use his mouth-words with a preference for making things difficult, instead he made another "Maow." He shoved his snout underneath the sheet. "Maow."

"You want to climb under the sheet, don't you..." Shockwave pulled it out from under him, creating a bubble large enough for Ravage to tunnel under.

He watched the large, mobile lump make its way to the foot of the berth until it reached the edge and Ravage's head popped out at the bottom. "Maow."

"What was the point of bothering me if you don't even want to use the sheet?!" Shockwave shouted at him as he climbed out and circled three times before laying down. Ravage spread out, pushing Shockwave's legs closer and closer towards the edge until he barely had any room for them. For such a relatively tiny thing he took up an awful lot of space.

Finally Shockwave had another moment of peace. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw were cuddled up next to each other, Ratbat was curled up on Shockwave's pillow, and Ravage was taking a moment to lick his paws, because Primus help him if he went to sleep with a little bit of dirt on him. Like before, that serene moment was interrupted, except this time it was interrupted less harmoniously by the sounds of screaming. The noise woke Ratbat who immediately began crying, disturbing the other three cassettes in the room that were attempting to sleep.

"Oh what now?" Shockwave was about to get up when the door flew open. Rumble and Frenzy were both still screaming at each other. "What do you want?!"

"Frenzy keeps hogging the blankets!" Rumble said angrily.

"Rumble licked my pillow!" Frenzy replied.

"Oh for the love of...! Can you two be trusted alone for two seconds without causing chaos?!"

"Nope," they both simultaneously said proudly.

A few moments later, the argument taken care of for the most part, Rumble and Frenzy both made themselves cozy on the berth with their brothers. Ravage seemed to have overtaken the entire lower half all on his own and with the rest of the cassettes on the upper half there just wasn't any room left for Shockwave, who was now laying on the floor with nothing but a pillow for his head.

"Night, 'Wave!" Frenzy shouted, waking Ratbat once again. His high pitched wails went unnoticed by the other cassettes, almost as though they were used to it by now.

"Soundwave owes me for this..." Shockwave mumbled.

The night was long and uncomfortable as the floor really was not the most ideal place to sleep. Ravage kept getting up and walking around the room, sniffing all the corners, pouncing on shadows, and batting some garbage around that he'd pulled out from under the desk. Sometime the next morning, Shockwave barely registered the odd feeling of his weight standing directly atop him in his sleep-induced haze.

"Maow," Ravage said loudly. Shockwave jumped from the unexpectedness, the sound amplified by the silence and the close proximity of Ravage's face to his.

"Go away, Ravage..." he mumbled before burying his face back into his pillow.

Ravage pawed at his shoulder. "Maow."

"It's too early..."

"Maow."

"I said go away!" No matter how much Shockwave protested, Ravage kept climbing all over him, pawing at him, and meowing. "Alright fine, I'll feed you!" Ravage finally lept off him and trotted to the door victoriously.

Once he was face first in a bowl of energon and finally quiet, Shockwave decided to go back to bed. He turned around and was cut off by the other cassettes standing in the doorway.

"Don't we get breakfast too?" Rumble asked.

As it turned out no one wanted the same thing. Ratbat was okay with Energon-O's and was the easiest to tend to, but Rumble wanted pancakes, Laserbeak and Buzzsaw preferred normal energon heated to exactly the right temperature (what the right temperature was Shockwave didn't know, so it required a lot of heating and refrigeration until they deemed it just right), and Frenzy would repeatedly ask for something and change his mind as Shockwave went to get it. Eventually he ended up with Energon-O's too.

"I have to admire Soundwave for not spacebridging you all to some random asteroid belt by now..." Shockwave sighed as they all ate like circus animals at a feeding station. The second they were finished eating they went back to rampaging through his lab like drunken little monkeys.

"Beaker fight!" Rumble shouted.

Seconds later beakers and test tubes went flying through the air and the sounds of breaking glass were their soundtrack. Shockwave stared on blankly, having fond memories of the time the Dinobots paid him an unexpected visit. They at least caused less destruction than the cassettes did and were at least polite enough to remodel his home by adding in two extra windows and a backdoor which were great for airing the place out on muggy days.

It wasn't until mid-afternoon that Soundwave finally decided to come collect them. Shockwave was sitting on the floor with his face in his hands and an annoyed look, which was quite a feat for a faceless cyclops, Ratbat bouncing up and down on his head to try and get him to stand up and give him a piggyback ride, Frenzy poking him and trying to ask him something, and the other cassettes streaking through the lab behind them. Ravage was now a brilliant shade of shimmery green from the side effects of a chemical that had spilled on him during the beaker fight.

Soundwave looked around at the destruction but didn't seem the least bit surprised. The cassettes all halted their rampage when they saw that he had arrived and charged his direction at once, leaping up at him and wrapping him up in a tight group hug.

"Ready to go home?" Soundwave asked. He caught sight of Ravage's new color scheme and eyed him for an explanation.

"It's only temporary..." Ravage replied. "I hope..."

"Say goodbye," Soundwave instructed.

"Bye, Shockwave!" Frenzy said.

"Bye!" Rumble added. They all waved at him with smiles on their faces. He merely glared daggers at them as he moved to the spacebridge controls to send them back.

Once they were gone, he strolled out of his trashed lab, into his room, and passed out across the berth. He woke up a few hours later screaming from the ensuing nightmares.


End file.
